Lab Rat Steam Charts & Stats

Great game

Funny Glados-like Story, nice Puzzles.

This is a puzzle game with a storyline that involves a player testing an, er... immersive gaming experience, as the AI guiding the experience goes ever faster off the rails. (This is all human-scripted and not AI-generated, just to make that clear upfront.) The puzzles are box-pushing puzzles with the twist that you can also pull the boxes and stand on top of them. I found this really intuitive; if you ever felt like "why can't I just PULL the darned thing! or climb over it!!!", here you can. There are all sorts of additions too, like different colors of lasers that also change the color of the boxes, and even more unusual ones that I would rather not spoil. The puzzles are simply excellent, absolutely chef's kiss level, a constant stream of "this is impossible! Wait... OMG". (I must highlight the puzzle designer, Lucas Le Slo, together with producer Gwen Frey.) The levels might skew less hardcore than in some of the other Le Slo games; at least I didn't end up looking up any solutions, but I did have some moments of utter desperation. I thought the difficulty curve was also nice, it ramps up evenly and then some of the hardest stuff is around the two-thirds point, so you don't end up in a situation where you really want to see how the story ends, but the last couple puzzles are impossible. You also generally have an option to skip levels, except at the very end for plot reasons. The story is really varied, it makes fun of the gaming industry, and often incorporates elements of other genres and popular games reimagined as block pushing. (I honestly enjoyed the parts lampooning Metal Gear Solid more than the actual Metal Gear Solid, can I get a whole game like this?) Especially early on, the game also gives you a bunch of metrics about how other players did, which I thought was interesting to see. The sometimes hilarious voice acting also really added to the ambience for me, more games should do this. There were a few moments which I found annoying - the side quest with the brother in the forest I recommend avoiding just because the humor fell flat for me, but it's optional. Overall the story was really entertaining, and had a meta element near the end that made me go "wait what?". It is interesting because there are no meta puzzles per se, unless I missed them; but the story has these meta elements. Lab Rat is one of my favorite games so far this year - I think it got a bit overshadowed by launching the same week as Blue Prince (which I played on the PS5, so I can't review it here), but it is just really snappy and polished and above all fun, I enjoyed the entirety of my ten hours. (Which was a nice contrast after Blue Prince, where I really enjoyed the beginning, and then the amount of fun I was having tapered off after the second ending.) Don't miss it! __ Source of the game: Bought with my own money (launch discount)

Excellent, funny puzzle game. The writing is consistently very funny and made me laugh out loud (for real) many times over the course of the game. This game has tons of ideas and doesn't let them overstay their welcome. There are constantly new puzzle styles and objectives introduced. This does mean there aren't really any brain-busters, but the puzzles are definitely not trivial. They are in the sweet spot of not too hard, not too easy. Not all levels are required to beat the game, but it is linear. I didn't discover any secrets and I don't believe there are any. But what's there is so good that it doesn't matter. The conclusion to both the story and the puzzles is very satisfying and manages to introduce new ideas up until the very end. This is definitely better and more varied than your average sokoban. Give it a try even if you have been avoiding sokoban style games for any reason.

Very silly game! Good puzzles, creativity, and humor! The gen z voice was painful thougghhh Would be amazing if they added a level editor with steam workshop!! They have so many creative tools

8/10 Fun puzzle game. The setting seems heavily inspired by portal, but with its own twist. The puzzles start out simple but increases in complexity steadily. The game gradually introduces new ideas to the simple baseline, with later puzzles becoming legitimately challenging. Due to the gradual ramp in difficulty, it is never overwhelming. Each new variation is introduced and then expanded upon, but never outstays its welcome. The game itself is also quite short and I finished it in around 10 hours. Overall, a solid puzzle game.

Great game and fun story, with a lot humor! The game and story has a Portal vibe (Even though the game says NOT-PORTAL in-game).

This is my favorite puzzle game since Portal 2. Not enough people know about this game, and it's so fun. It's short, it's fun, it'll make you think, and it'll make you laugh. Definitely buy this game.